Monthly Columns Archives

icon Blueprint for September

Changing Seasons, Ongoing Challenges

3 min read

Autumn is a season of change. While many poets refer to spring as the season of rebirth, I tend to think of the fall more as the marking of a new life cycle. September has always been my favorite month, when the heat and humidity yield to cooler, drier air. It’s generally a much more pleasant time in my view. While spring is nice, it also marks the nearing of oppressive summer heat in the Washington, DC, area where I live.

icon The Guru Is In

How to Sue the Federal Government (and Live to Tell the Tale)

5 min read

Never in my professional experience has a government defendant so cavalierly offered up a gratuitous admission against interest as did President Biden the day the Centers for Disease Control “independently” announced that it had miraculously discovered authority to reimpose a nationwide eviction moratorium.

icon Breaking Ground

Gilbert Winn, CEO, WinnCompanies

12 min read

In the fall of 2019, Gilbert Winn, the CEO of Boston-based WinnCompanies, formed a task force to explore new ways to reduce eviction rates within the company’s affordable housing portfolio. Five months later COVID-19 hit, but the task force continued to meet and hash out ideas and best practices that would be refined throughout 2020.

icon Blueprint for August

Redeveloping a Developed Nation

3 min read

Seems like I got a lucky draw when I was born in the United States, the wealthiest nation in the world. I was fortunate to be alive for the final Apollo mission when Americans last set foot on the surface of the moon. As a kid, I watched the first Space Shuttle launch in 1981 and with 135 missions over 30 years, they hardly made the news anymore by the time I was an adult.

icon The Guru Is In

Mutual Benefit Entities

6 min read

As I showed in last month’s Guru, under-reinvested urban neighborhoods are left behind or shortchanged on economic capital, political capital, municipal infrastructure, coordinated government policy and local income and earning power.

icon Blueprint for July

An Influx of Funding for a ‘Bespoke’ Industry

3 min read

In this issue, we look to the states to see when and how this new funding will make its way into local affordable housing markets around the country. As the director of the Pennsylvania Housing Finance Agency notes, this is a “bespoke” industry where no two deals are exactly alike. That presents a challenge as states are figuring out how to deploy all these new resources and are stepping up to the plate to do so equitably and effectively. Many states will use it to help address the housing disparities JCHS cites in its report. Make no mistake, this investment is such that hasn’t been seen since the start of the Low Income Housing Tax Credit program decades ago.

icon The Guru Is In

Underinvestment is Contagious

6 min read

As the pandemic has demonstrated, for people to be healthy, their homes must be healthy, and for homes to be healthy, their communities must be healthy. Work we’ve been doing for the last half a year in Black neighborhoods of Milwaukee has uncovered six deeply rooted and mutually reinforcing causes of unhealthy neighborhoods due to contagious underinvestment:

icon Breaking Ground

Joaquin Altoro, Wisconsin Housing and Economic Development Authority

11 min read

Exciting things are going on in Wisconsin. There’s a pilot program soon getting underway that will examine opportunities for expanding access to affordable workforce housing.

icon Blueprint for June

Emerging After a Long Hibernation

3 min read

This issue of Tax Credit Advisor focuses on asset management. We have several engaging articles on how to determine when to sell or hold properties, the relative success of using private placement and a look at how property managers and owners are preparing to restart inspections this month after being on hold for more than a year during the pandemic.

icon The Guru Is In

After the Eviction Moratorium

5 min read

When the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) announced last August that it was declaring a nationwide moratorium on all rental evictions, not just those in federally subsidized properties, I instantly thought, That’s unconstitutional. Somebody will sue the government and it’ll get overturned. Sure enough, on May 5, 2021 the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia (DC for DC) did just that, and a good thing too, because well-met laws intended to offer short-term relief frequently do long-term damage – as I know from personal experience.

icon Breaking Ground

Vincent R. Bennett, President and CEO, McCormack Baron Salazar, Inc.

10 min read

Asset managing can be challenging in the best of times but add a global pandemic to the equation and companies have had to reevaluate best practices to ensure peak property performance.

icon Blueprint for May

Framing the Debate on Wood Construction

3 min read

Regular readers of this column know I’m a native of Maine, the “Pine Tree State.” As the nickname implies, it’s a place that has more forests than urban and suburban areas. All those trees have helped power Maine’s economic engine in the form of paper, logging and lumber mills. And remember that shortage of swabs for COVID-19 tests last year? Yep, lots of those wooden sticks with a cotton ball on the tip are manufactured in Maine.

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